U.S. Pat. No. 3,472,639 (Mumford) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,427,431 (Mumford et al.), which were assigned to a predecessor of the assignee of this application, the disclosure of each of which is incorporated by reference herein, generally describe the manufacture of glass containers by a machine type that is known as an I.S. machine. As taught by such references or as is otherwise known, an I.S. machine has a plurality of side-by-side sections, usually six, eight, ten or even twelve sections, and containers are formed in each section in a two-step process. In the first step, one or more, and often three or four, container preforms, which are often called parisons or blanks, are formed by blowing or pressing. The preforms, which are formed in an inverted orientation, that is, with their open ends down, have body portions that are formed in split molds, often called blank molds. Threaded or otherwise suitably configured closure-receiving finish portions of such preforms are formed in separate molds, usually referred to as neck molds or neck rings, which are positioned adjacent to the split blank molds during the molding of parisons therein.
After the conclusion of the parison molding step, the split molds open and the parisons, which are then gripped by the neck molds, are transferred by inverting them through an arc of 180° to split blow molds for blowing of the parisons into containers. The inverting step is performed by turning an invert shaft, to which neck mold-carrying arms are slideably affixed, and results in the parisons being upright during blow molding, that is with their open ends up. The transferring of glass container parisons or blanks from blank molds to blow molds of an I.S. machine, as generally described above, is generally described in commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,893,942 (Nickey et al.) and U.S. Pat. No. 6,098,427 (Kirkman), the disclosure of each of which is also incorporated by reference herein.
Conventionally, as is explained, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,630,709 (Irwin), which was assigned to a predecessor of the assignee of this application, the disclosure of which is also incorporated by reference herein, containers are blown in blow molds of an I.S. machine by a blowhead that is moved into blowing engagement with the parisons in the blow molds at a given I.S. machine section, and is then moved out of engagement with blown containers at such blow molds. The blown containers are then removed from the blow molds, after the split molds are opened, by a takeout mechanism that is equipped with a plurality of tongs, one set of tongs for each blow mold at the section of the I.S. machine with which the takeout mechanism is associated. Commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,241,448 B1 (Nicholas), the disclosure of which is also incorporated by reference herein, describes a takeout mechanism as generally described above for removing blown containers from molds of an I.S. machine section. U.S. Pat. No. 5,807,419 (Rodriquez-Wong et al.) describes an I.S. machine in which the functions of a blowhead and a takeout mechanism are combined in a single mechanism. However, the mechanism of the '419 reference teaches the use of conventional pivoting tongs (elements 72, 73) to engage each container below a bead, called a transfer bead, that is positioned below the threaded or otherwise configured finish of a container, and this requires that the split blow mold be opened before the blown containers can be grasped for removal by the tongs. The requirement that blow molds be opened before the blown container can be grasped by tongs is a machine timing disadvantage for reasons explained in the aforesaid '488 B1 patent.